Up and Away
Take to the skies and explore a tiny world from the basket of your hot air balloon.
Play as Lucy, a young adventurer on a journey to visit her grandma on a distant island in the clouds.
Navigate the wind currents from island to island, meeting colourful locals along the way as you drift towards your destination in this short, relaxing, atmospheric game.
How to Play
- Use the buttons on your hot air balloon to control your altitude
- Navigate the wind currents from island to island
Credits
Up and Away was written and designed by Ross McCormick.
The music was composed by Ross McCormick.
The game is written entirely in Pico-8.
Love it! Such a wonderful cart.
The gameplay is absolutely spot-on and I love the graphics, in particular the way you've shown the wind.
Its such a beautiful, perfect, little package, it almost seems wrong to consider a longer version of this game. I'd imagine you're at your token limit anyway, but the game length was perfect.
Simply wonderful.
The gameplay is charming, and the graphics and music are both perfect. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful little piece of art, I miss my grandparents very much and I got a little teary-eyed playing it. This is exactly the kind of experience that makes the Pico-8 community such a great place to explore and keep coming back to.
Thank you so much @phil for your kind words! I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed the game. The wind effects were a fun challenge to create, so I'm glad they stood out to you. Your feedback on the game length is much appreciated; it took a lot of playtesting to narrow down the pacing so it's great to know it felt just right. Comments like yours inspire me to keep creating. Thanks again.
Thank you @nicegame! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the game. I spent a lot of time on the soundtrack; the islanders theme turned out to be my favourite of the tracks.
Thank you so much @ridgek for your touching comment! It means a lot to hear that the game resonated with you on such a personal level. The Pico-8 community truly is special; I'm glad to have found it and I'm grateful to be a part of it.
The game is pretty short, but it is absolutely wonderful. Nice music fitting the mood in just the right way, nice graphics with islets in the dithered sky. And all this journey is paced quite well with very welcomed breaks for ground-level side quests. I wish there were more islands, but Up and Away is denitely a great experience to have from start to finish.
Thank you so much @lastofavari for your kind words! I really enjoy your Pico-8 Adventures series. I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed Up and Away. I wish I could have added more islands and additional side quests too, however I was unfortunately running low on tokens by the time I’d implemented the second island with the fishing side quest.
This is a neat concept for a game. The story is pleasant, and the graphics are suitable for the theme and well executed. Great job.
In my opinion, the ballooning portions are a bit slow and take up a little too much time. You seem to have gone for some degree of realism in the way the balloon works, but that makes it a little tedious to operate. I think if the balloon were more responsive, the game would feel better. Also, I did not read your post until after I'd played the game, so I had no idea I could release air until I stumbled onto it during the last leg of the journey. Maybe have the game mention that when you start. I was having a miserable time waiting for my balloon to cool off enough to sink when changing jet streams.
If possible, having the balloon expand and shrink during game play would add a lot to the experience.
Nice game, thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your feedback @PoorCosmo!
I’m amazed to hear you made it through the game without using the balloon’s pressure relief mechanic until the last leg of the journey! You must have had an incredible amount of patience as the balloon’s ambient temperature losses are extremely slow! I agree that it is probably worthwhile mentioning the core gameplay mechanics within the game itself, rather than solely in the post.
I'm glad you enjoyed the story and graphics; the games atmosphere was my main focus during development. Thanks again for playing and sharing your thoughts!
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